Pacing

Here is my pace chart from Boston. The bars show my speed in every 5k/3.1mi segment. The last segment is only 2.2k/1.3 mi long. The differences are accentuated because the X axis starts at 6.8mph. The yellow graph shows the moving average. 8mph translates to 3:16:30. I did 3:22:21. I dropped below 8 at 16 miles (2 hours).

As you can see my speed first increased and then dropped as the race progressed. The much lower speeds in bins 6 and 7 are due to the infamous Newton hills. Without those hills I probably would gone smoothly from 7.81 to 7.53, without a dip. Still, the decline is real. I attribute it to the fact that I did not include any long runs in my training. The longest run I did this year, prior to Boston, was at 13.4 miles.

Ideally speaking one would need a flat graph. Some people that ended up running a 3:16 ran even with me in the beginning, but they kept their pace to the end.

I do remind the reader that my objective is not to run marathons. I use marathons to train for ironman races. If I really trained for the marathon I would probably be able to hold my speed better. That is why I think I could run a 3:15. But it would take a whole lot more training -especially long runs- to do that. Right now, this is training for Lake Placid in July.

45 miles so far

This is proving harder than I thought. I have never run every day for seven days in a row, let alone run fast (fast for me that is). I am running this whole exercise on the treadmill just to make sure I keep the pace. That works out just fine because the weather outside is miserable and wet.

Yesterday I forgot to bring my running shoes so I ran in my tennis shoes. They felt much heavier and maybe because of it, I ran slower. I finished a little over 7.9 miles in the first hour and had to work pretty hard to stay there. Overall, I ran 9.2 miles. No problems with my knees but I ended up with a pretty big blood blister on the bottom of my left little toe. I punctured it and lots of blood came out. But overnight it filled again.

Today, I squeezed some more liquid out of the blister and cut away the skin and covered it with a band-aid. So far so good. I ran 8 miles in the first hour and continued to run 9 overall. I am now 45 miles into my 100K (63 mile) week. I can definitely feel it in my calves now.

Although it was hard, I managed to run faster than yesterday and I ran the second half at 8.2 mph and the final 10 minutes at 8.4 mph. Just fast enough to finish 8 miles in one hour. The first two days I ran 8.2 to 8.25 in an hour.

When I was finished I noticed that my left heel had a rubbing spot where the skin was gone. It was bloody. Blood had seeped through my sock and stained both my sock and my shoes. I only noticed this later and although it hurt in the shower, I had not been aware of it before.

I have been checking my weight post run and I lose about 2 pounds every time I do this. But no cramps, so far that is. Two more days to go.